Irish identity verification company ID-Pal expands into US market

13 Mar 2023

From left: James O’Toole, Sara West, Colum Lyons, Rob O’Farrell, Shelley McKinney and Simon Montgomery. Image: Robbie Reynolds Photography

This is the second major expansion for the Irish regtech in less than a year, after its UK launch in May of 2022.

Irish identity verification company ID-Pal, which is backed by Enterprise Ireland, has announced its official expansion into the US market.

The Irish start-up, which previously featured on our Start-up of the Week series, serves businesses in more than 30 industries with remote identity and address verification using biometric, facial matching, liveness testing, address verification and document checks. Its identity verification platform also streamlines anti-money laundering (AML) and know your customer (KYC) compliance.

As part of the expansion, the company’s clients now include the likes of payments and gift cards provider Blackhawk Network (BHN), procurement and compliance platform Certa, global payments company and US Bancorp subsidiary Elavon, and the recent JP Morgan-acquired Global Shares.

The company also already has a considerable network of strategic partners in the US that includes Salesforce, Corporate One and Melissa Data.

The US expansion comes less than a year since the regtech start-up expanded into the UK market in May of last year, while it also received €7m in funding in July to support its global expansion. Today, 30pc of its revenue comes from UK businesses, while 15pc comes from businesses in the US.

Speaking about the launch, Colum Lyons, CEO and founder of ID-Pal, said 2022 was a landmark year for ID-Pal. “In just nine months we launched in the UK, secured Series A funding and now, with the support of Enterprise Ireland, our US and European investors, and our strategic partners, we are officially launching into the US in 2023.”

Karen Cohalan, department manager for fintech, financial and business services at Enterprise Ireland, said: “Enterprise Ireland warmly welcomes ID-Pal’s launch in the US market. Supporting Irish-owned companies to achieve greater scale and expand their global footprint is an ongoing priority for Enterprise Ireland.

“Enterprise Ireland looks forward to working with the ID-Pal team to continue to support their growth ambitions as they expand their customer base in the US whilst continuing to create jobs here in Ireland.”

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Colin Ryan is a copywriter/copyeditor at Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com